Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Time Change Again

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Doesn't it seem like we just had a time change? Time for another one!

Sunday, March 13 is the big day in the US.

For those who practice Daylight Savings Time in the Northern Hemisphere, we will be "springing forward." We will effectively lose an hour of sleep and start our day an hour earlier. So what is currently 7 AM will soon be 8 AM.

For those in the Southern Hemisphere, you will be "falling back," meaning you gain an hour. What is 7 AM will be 6 AM.

Springing forward is the easier way to go so far as changing the schedule for babies goes. It is also helpful in suddenly fixing those early wakers. If your baby is waking at 6 every day and you want her waking at 7, you can just wait until Daylight Savings and wake her at 7. Just like that--problem solved!

I am thrilled the time change is coming!! My son wakes at 6:45, which will now be 7:45! YAY! Lunch can be at noon vs. 11am. Nap will be at 1:00 vs. 12:00. And bedtime can move to 8:00pm which will be great for more time with Daddy after work...and for evenings at the pool this summer!

Also, if you put baby to bed on the old time (ie. 7:00pm), then change the clocks ahead and go to bed at your usual time (according to the now changed clocks in your house) you will lose an hour of TV or computer instead of an hour of sleep! You go to bed at the new 11pm (old 10pm) and everyone sleeps until the new 8:00am!! :) You actually GAIN an hour of sleep time.

If I may be so bold, I need a second-opinion about dropping the dreamfeed in light of the time change. (If any readers have suggestions, please jump in!)

(Side note: in addition to giving context to my time change question, I've been meaning to write in about our successful move to a 4-hour schedule before dropping the DF. I wanted to do the reverse, as I saw benefits to that particular order, but as you pointed out in a 4-hour schedule post: sometimes you have to follow your mommy-gut. I thought it would be helpful to those who find themselves in a similar predicament. Now I don't feel as silly writing about something you've basically addressed already…hehe.)

Two weeks ago, I moved Thomas (21 wks) to a 4-hour schedule. After agonizing over whether to first drop the DF or move to a 4-hour, I decided on the latter. The kicker: he simply was not hungry after 3 hours anymore and we fought over the first 3 feedings - not pleasant. As mentioned above, I followed my gut and moved to the 4 hour. (The McKenna summaries were so helpful this since you did the reverse with her.) What a difference! He immediately embraced it: for the first time in his short existence I have to wake him for naps more often than not. My chronic short-napper now takes a 3 hour morning nap, 2.5 hour afternoon nap and a 45min to 1 hour evening snooze as needed. Feedings were no longer a fight. He even started STTN consistently again; we had begun to regress on that. Oh happy day!

Last night I decided we'd start the DF-drop process; moving the time incrementally earlier is the plan. Honestly, the feeding seems a formality now. Case in point, one night last week he woke up inconsolable at 9pm, totally out of the norm for him. It seemed to silly to soothe him to sleep only to wake him at 10pm to eat so I just fed him early. He was back to sleep by 9:30pm and actually slept later the next morning, until 7:30am. A 10 hour night - record-breaking! Even still, I want to take at least a few days to ease into dropping the DF.

Now that I've written a novel (gold stars all around for those still with me), I just want a second pair of eyes/second brain. In the post 'Time Change: Troubleshooting', you suggest not making changes during this period. This is my instinct as well. The time change itself makes my head spin and stomach turn. Electively adding another change on top of a compulsory change would make problem-solving unnecessarily complex, right?

On the other hand, we still have 8 days until the change. Taking into account his age, his consistent STTN and that early DF fluke success last week, should I just go for it? He's also pretty amenable; change is to him as water is to fish. And if three or so days into to tweaking the DF time it goes awry, we could always go back to 10pm and wait another 2 weeks.

If you have time, I'd love to hear what you think! (Same goes to anyone else!)

Unfortunately, I don't think time change is going to fix our problem!!

My daughter is 21 months. She transitioned from 2 to 1 nap at 15 months old. For a while her nap length was 1.5 hours to 2 hours. Then around 18 months she finally got into a good nap routine of sleeping 2 hrs to 2.5 hours.

The past two weeks or so, she has been sleep 1 hour to 1.5 hours, with maybe a two hour nap in there every so often.

I am stumped as to what is going on!!

Naptime has moved from 1pm to 1:30 and now it is at 2pm.

Should I try and move it to 2:30pm? Or move it back to 1:30pm?

What could be the culprit for this sudden shortening of naptime at 21 months old? Surely she is not ready to drop the nap altogether! (Please say NO!) :)

As far as I know....she isn't teething, isn't sick. Right now I do think she is having some allergy troubles...but the nap issues started way before her allergies started acting up.

What do you think???????

Here is how today's nap went (so you have more info to go on!): Laid her down at 2pm. She went right to sleep. (She has had several days where she will play/talk in the crib until 2:15/2:30 or later.) But today she went right to sleep. A little after 3pm she was awake and not happy.

Info about nighttime sleep: Bedtime is 8:45. She normally goes right to sleep and sleeps til 8 or 8:30 the next morning. When the short naps started, she also started talking/playing before going to bed at night, sometimes not falling asleep until 9:15ish. So I pushed bedtime to 9pm. Still talked/played, so went back to 8:45pm bedtime. She has started going to sleep right away again BUT, she has started waking sometimes earlier than 8am (7:45 or 7:30 once or twice). Guess time change will solve that :)

This is our first "bump" since the 2 to 1 transition at 15 months. I am SO THANKFUL for babywise & this blog!

Follow up to my earlier post... now I'm thinking that the time change might be a blessing in disguise (I'm lucky that it's Spring Forward!). Currently his schedule is 7,11,3,7 & 10(DF). But I'm not opposed to a 7:30 or 8 first feeding - my husband just started a new job and I feel like he gets so little time with his son at night! So if he ended up with a 7:30pm or 8pm 'final' bottle, he probably won't be that hungry for the 10pm DF for much longer.

Thought I would check back in and let you know what happened. I continued moving his dreamfeed earlier and earlier the week before the time change. Saturday night (3/12), we did not wake him for a dreamfeed and he slept straight through!

Not only that, he has slept 10.5/11.5 hours each and every night since then. :) I'm cautious in posting this lest I jinx us. ;)

Looking back, I think he was ready to drop the DF much earlier. I'm willing to bet that the regression we saw with him STTN right around 4 months was his readiness to sleep longer. I will definitely be more bold with any subsequent babies. :) He is happy with his 4 hour schedule and so is this momma!

Lastly, I have to say it was harder for me emotionally to drop this DF than I expected. Even though he wasn't awake during the bottle, I still got to cuddle with him before I went to bed. It certainly didn't help that the same day we dropped the DF he rolled over from back to front for the first time and we were shocked to find his first tooth popping through! (23 weeks) Too many firsts in one day! :)

Jessica, sorry I am so late with this. I am glad things went well! FYI, sleep regression is normal at 4 months old for all babies. And I felt like I could have dropped the DF earlier with all of my kids--even McKenna. I think it is better to go a little too long than too early. And I agree with you--it is sad to lose that cuddle time :)

NO! Do not drop the nap altogether. Sleep issues are common close to two years old. They are also common sometime between 18-22 months old.

It really sounds like a normal, random sleep issue. If you didn't change anything before she started sleeping this way, then you can try tweaking nap time (if she is getting up earlier in the morning, she might need an earlier nap).